Toy
by Gray Jedi 4000
Summary: (Crossover with The Crucible by Arthur Miller) Abigail Williams and Elizabeth Proctor find themselves in a strange and forbidding palace quite suddenly. Set during Ozai's adolescence.


**This was an English project - an exploration of Abigail Williams' character as she explores the earlier world of Avatar: The Last Airbender. Enjoy.**

* * *

_Run._

That was the only thing that pounded in the young prince's head as his boots slapped the stone of the palace floors. He had to get _away _from that place, from that _man. _The walls flashed by, pretty lies depicted in the tapestries, but he barely noticed them in his panicked rush to his safe place. He hated this panic, the insanity that always followed one of Father's 'conferences.' His mind's betrayal coming right after his body's.

Ozai stopped. Where was he? Had he run too far? No, there was the second music hall, and there was its storage room. His safe place was only a couple corridors away. He was okay.

For now.

Abigail stumbled from the wooden deck of her ship onto smooth stone floor. _What?_ Her surrounding had changed in an instant, from endless sea to enclosed space. Some sort of witchcraft? Was she going to _die_ here?

_Would serve me right._ The acerbic thought swept away the sudden panic, leaving her saddened and bitter. Elizabeth was here too. She was still jealous - how had _she _of all people managed to snare _John Proctor? _But if she was here, than Abigail wasn't alone. There was that, at least.

"Where are we?" Goody Proctor's first words were laced with fear, curiosity, and suspicion all at once, along with a silent promise - as long as they were here together, in this unfamiliar place, they would work together to survive.

"I don't know." An agreement to that silent promise.

Only a few moments, and a boy - girl - person burst in. Black hair down clipped neatly at the chin. Pale skin that seemed to glow in the flickering torchlight. Golden eyes that mirrored the flames. What was it? A demon from hell, or some strange angel? Perhaps this was the witch that had trapped them there, though it, or they, seemed just as confused as they.

Ozai stared in confusion. Who were these strange women, with their too-light hair and peasant clothing? One looked on the younger side of old, and the other seemed about sixteen - his age - but Iroh's fanciful stories of witches murmured in his head, and he wondered how old they really were. They seemed just as confused as he, however. A good sign.

The thing was, they were in his safe place. That place that no-one but he knew about. Or was _supposed_ to know about. Why did they have to be _here _of all places?

"What…who are you? What are you doing here?" he finally managed to say.

The younger one only shrugged and said, "We're about as clear on that as you are. Could you tell us where we are?"

He blinked. "The royal palace. Could…could you come out of there? I kind of need to be alone right now." _Royal demeanor. Nice job there, buddy._ Nonetheless, shock quickly dawned on his visitors' faces, and they hurried out. Ozai closed the door behind them gratefully and _finally_ got to huddle - alone - in one of the room's many nooks and crannies.

Abigail's heart fluttered a little. The royal palace! Did that mean the boy - when she'd heard his voice, she'd instantly recognized it as male - was a royal himself? Oh, God in heaven, they could have been executed!

Elizabeth touched her arm, stopping her from scurrying away. Abigail turned, ready to hiss at her - they may be working together, but she didn't have to _like_ it - but Elizabeth's only movement afterwards was to jerk her head towards the door of the recently occupied room. _She wants to eavesdrop,_ she realized. A first for the devout Puritan woman, though her lips were pursed with selfless worry.

Seriously, how on _earth_ had she managed to get John Proctor?

They knelt, ears to the door. There wasn't much coming from behind it besides a soft indecipherable murmur. It seemed the boy - prince - was muttering to himself, though they couldn't make anything out. A while passed before their attempted eavesdropping was interrupted by a small voice.

"What are you doing?"

Abigail turned to see a small child - seven or eight, at the most - peering up at them with the same gold eyes as the mysterious boy. "Um -" she stammered. She never had been good with kids.

Elizabeth to the rescue. "We're lost here. We don't know how we came to be here, and we don't know where we are. Do you think you could help us? It's very important."

The little one's eyes lit up. "Yes I can! Father says that when I grow up and become Fire Lord, helping people will be my job, so I should probably practice now."

Wait.

What on earth was a _Fire Lord?_

Ozai huddled alone in the corner of his little safe room - _was it really safe anymore _\- feeling the numbness creep up through the back of his mind. He was no longer sure which was more desirable, the pain and fear of betrayal or that ever-present, cold, hopeless numbness. This uncertainty was the final mutiny, the betrayal of his heart after those of his father, his body, his mind…

_No. Don't think. Don't feel. Not after an attack. Just breathe. _Yes, numbness was what he needed now.

Just be numb.

Elizabeth kept conversing with the child - she thought she'd heard the name _Lu Ten_ mentioned - but Abby could only pay tangential attention to the conversation, instead inspecting the crimson and black decorations with new suspicion. A million questions clambered in her mind, but most could be simplified down to one:

What the Devil _was _this place?

Immediately, instinctively, she flinched at her unintentional wording. Maybe she had been hanging out with the wrong crowd. Even if she _was _what Elizabeth had always thought of her - and she _wasn't_, she was doing what literally _anyone else _would have done in her situation - that didn't give her the right to disrespect the Almighty God with frivolous language, did it?

The voice of John Proctor - her lover, her only, her doom - echoed in her head. _You are pulling down God and raising up a whore!_

Suddenly Elizabeth was tapping her on the shoulder, the little boy gone from sight. Abigail woke up from her sudden spell of self-pity. Quietly, Goody Proctor summed up what the boy had just told her. She murmured with confusion about bruises on the boy, a depression hanging about him with the weight of a thousand Earths, and half-muffled screams from one Azulon's room, but Abby instinctively understood what those omens meant.

The boy - Ozai - had been violated. Desecrated. Objectified. By his own _father._

That…that was _wrong _on _so_ many levels.

In a wave of anger, she stormed into the safe place, intending to _demand_ the location of this Azulon and _take him down_ \- but the look Ozai gave her as she entered stopped her cold. Fear for the first second - fear, of _her,_ how oddly delicious - but it was replaced immediately by utter resignation.

Her anger went cold, submerged by a sudden lurch in her gut. She _hated_ that resignation. After only a few seconds, but she still hated it.

She didn't yell, didn't demand as she had thought of doing. Instead she knelt in front of the huddled prince and whispered, with a quiet, trembling intensity, "Where is the one who did this to you."

He looked up and knew exactly what she was planning. "You'd need a weapon. And an opportunity for stealth."

She hadn't thought of that. _I hadn't thought of a lot of things, especially with John._

Elizabeth came in and sat down beside her while she was thinking. She had, it turned out, found an entirely different problem with Ozai. "Your mother doesn't love you."

The prince tensed, retreated into his nook, but affirmed with a quiet "No, she doesn't."

Elizabeth's hand reached out to stroke his hair - but he flinched, curling up, and her hand fell back into her lap. "Hush now," she said anyways. "I'll be your mother."

Ozai seemed surprised by that.

It was decided, then. Some act of God had brought them here to pay for their sins by helping this boy. And they would do so, if it was their only way home. They would not bend or break in the face of this challenge - work together, live in this strange, perverted new land, bring this boy to the light of Christ.

Abigail wondered what Ozai would look like smiling.


End file.
